ALLIANCE BETWEEN ATHENS AND ARGOS. 101 This important interval was turned to account by the Argeian Demos, who, being plainly warned that they were to look on Sparta only as an enemy, immediately renewed their alliance with Athens. Regarding her as their main refuge, they com- menced the building of long walls to connect their city with tho sea, in order that the road might always be open for supplies and reinforcement from Athens, in case they should be confined to their walls by a superior Spartan force. The whole Argeian population men and women, free and slave set about the work with the utmost ardor : while Alkibiades brought assistance from Athens, 1 especially skilled masons and carpenters, of whom they stood in much need. The step may probably have been suggested by himself, as it was the same which, two years before, he had urged upon the inhabitants of Patra. But the construc- tion of walls adequate for defence, along the line of four miles and a half between Argos and the sea, 2 required a long time. Moreover, the oligarchical party within the town, as well as the exiles without, a party defeated but not annihilated, strenu- ously urged the Lacedaemonians to put an end to the work, and even promised them a counter-revolutionary movement in the town as soon as they drew near to assist ; the same intrigue which had been entered into by the oligarchical party at Athens forty years before, when the walls down to Peiraeus were in course of erection. 3 Accordingly about the end of September, 417 B.C., king Agis conducted an army of Lacedaemonians and allies against Argos, drove the population within the city, and destroyed so much of the long walls as had been already raised. But the oligarchical party within were not able to realize their engagements of rising in arms, so that he was obliged to retire after merely ravaging the territory and taking the town of Hysiae, where he put to death all the freemen who fell into his hands. After his departure, the Argeians retaliated these ravages upon the neighboring territory of Phlius, where the exiles from Argoa chiefly resided. 1 1 Thucyd. v, 82. Kal oi filv 'Apyeloi navdrj/nei, KOI avroi nal yvvaiKee Kal olnerai, ereq^foy, etc. Plutarch, Alkibiad. c. 1 5. 2 Pausanias, ii, 36, 3. * Thucyd. i, 107. 1 Thucyd. v, 83. Diodorus inaccurately states that the Argeians had al ready built their long walls down to the sea nvdouevfi roi)c 'Apj^tot>< LIBRARY
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